Customer Reviews

Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (Modern Library)

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I've read all the stories in this book at least 3 times. Most of the times I skip around, but twice I've read straight through -- the stories are so consistently good, and, though wide ranging, complement each other so well. These are NOT horror stories. Horror (to me, at least) implies not only more explicit violence, but also an attitude that reality is, at core, physically and morally chaotic. "Dark Descent" is a horror anthology -- "Great Tales" is for the most part (although "The Great God Pan" and H.P. Lovecraft's 2 stories provide some exception) more old-fashioned "ghost stories," and what mystery genre critics would categorize as "English cozy": pleasant characters, warm surroundings introduced all the better to scare you with later on. The evil is seen through a hole in the curtain, so to speak, and never engulfs. The first group of stories ("Tale of Terror") are not exactly supernatural, but extremely suspenseful, with wonderful denouements. Poe's "The Facts in the Strange Case of M. Valdemar" is wonderfully horrible - a dying man is hypnotised to keep him alive (it turns out to be a mistake, of course). "Suspicion" by Dorothy Sayers is NOT a murder mystery, but a perfectly built-up tale of suspense. I've read it a dozen times and the pace of the story still catches me. "Home for Christmas," in which a nice doctor kills his bossy wife before leaving on vacation, would make a great Hitchcock movie. "Moonlight Sonata" is the short but shocking story of a man who stays overnight at a friend's house and awakens to an unpleasant visitor (not a ghost, but worse). Despite the emphasis on surprise endings, all of these stories have such great style and atmosphere that they are often, if anything, better the 2nd or 3rd time around. The second group, "Tales of the Supernatural," have all the qualities mentioned above but are more wide ranging in terms of imaginativeness. My Man M.R. James fits right in here, of course, and 2 of his best tales - "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad" and "Casting the Runes" - are featured. Also Guy de Maupassant ("Was It a Dream?", in which a young lover spends the night mourning the death of his mistress in a cemetery, is fabulous). Also Rudyard Kipling; E.F. Benson; Algernon Blackwood ("Ancient Sorceries" features a mild-mannered Englishman oddly drawn to a small French village with a history of witchcraft); and such great titles as "The Screaming Skull" and "The Haunters and the Haunted or The House and the Brain" which, despite the campy names, will leave you far from laughing. There are stories in this section, also, that would better be categorized as fantasy ("The Celestial Omnibus" and "Adam and Eve and Pinch-me"). I liked them a lot even though I don't usually read fantasy. The majority are SCARY, though, and all are well-written by any standard (Henry James gives us "Sir Edmund Orme" and Ernest Hemingway tells of "The Killers"). If you like a more modern style, more explicit sex and violence, less atmosphere and more cut-to-the-chase, this book probably isn't for you. But if you like good, old-fashioned, solid, subtle, clever writing, with lots of atmosphere as well as great plotting (and you like to be scared), then this is a must-have.

Over a year ago I had been overcome with the urge for horror fiction, but all the modern writers left me a bit cold. Even Stephen King, though he crafted many great tales, still writes in that modern way that will cheat, and throw in sex and violence when the ability to create atmosphere falters.
If you are looking for pure mood, and want to read writers that had complete respect for the language, then buy this book. Even one not normally inclined to horror fiction will find this endlessly entertaining. You will turn back to this book for years. It's sad, but there are few who write like this anymore. In my mind, it's understatement that provokes the sense of dread that many of these tales convey.

I am now on my second copy of of the Wise and Fraser anthology. I read my first copy (purchased in the late 1950's)to death. Over many years this book has remained one of the greatest anthologies of scary stories ever put toghter. As the title implies it is broken into two parts; stories that have terrifying situations and supernatural stories. It was first published in 1944 so do not look for stories by Stephen King or Cliver Barker. What you will find are wonderful stories that either already were or have become classics.
The terror stories include some adventures such as Connell's, "The Most Dangerous Game," and Collins' "Terribly Strange Bed." The Supernatural stories include greats such as M. R. James', "Casting the Runes" and Edward White's, "Lukundoo." (If "Lukundoo" does not make your skin crawl I suggest that you have your skin on too tight) There is also E.F. Benson's, "Mrs. Amworth" which I believe to be the best short vampire story ever written.
Here are 52 stories packed into an anthology tht belongs on the shelf of anyone who likes scary stories and is a basic staple on the shelf of a collector.

Now this is what I call an anthology. I have a special affection for this one because it's where, as a child, I first encountered three stories which have remained important to me ever since - Saki's "Sredni Vashtar", in which a sickly boy makes a god of a ferret and is well rewarded; Guy de Maupassant's "Was it a Dream?", in which a bereaved lover has a vision of corpses rising from the grave to inscribe the truth about their lives in place of the pious lies upon their gravestones; and what was probably my first Poe story, the out-and-out nightmare "The Black Cat". Other gems among the fifty-odd here include Robert Hichens' "How Love Came to Professor Guildea", one of the most disturbing ghost stories ever written; Conrad Aitken's "Silent Snow, Secret Snow", a haunting study of childhood madness; and Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" - a breathlessly paced tale of sadistic sportsmanship which was turned, by the makers of King Kong (and on the same sets) into a far superior piece to the more famous, but idiotic, film. Wagner and Wise have managed to include virtually every famous name in the field (at least up to 1944), and they've almost unfailingly chosen from the authors' best stories. Besides the comparatively clumsy "Dunwich Horror", Lovecraft is also represented with "The Rats in the Walls", one of his first masterpieces; LeFanu is represented with "Green Tea"; Oliver Onions with "The Beckoning Fair One"; Arthur Machen with "The Great God Pan" and M R James with "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad", one of the handful of truly great tales by this largely overrated (if academically acceptable) writer. Other contributors include Dorothy L Sayers, H G Wells, E F Benson, Algernon Blackwood, Richard Middleton (the comic "The Ghost Ship"), Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, Edward Lucas White (the downright horrible "Lukundoo"), Isak Dinesen and Rudyard Kipling. If you know your tales of horror and the supernatural, you'll probably know some of the stories already; but the sheer size and scope of this collection make it a safe bet that you'll find some previously undiscovered treasure here as well. If you're tired of inept Stephen King imitations, this book came out two years before the prototype was born (the oldest author featured is Balzac, born in 1799). And if you don't know the field and don't know where to start, I can't imagine a better place. This hardcover edition is also extremely well made, with Fuseli's "The Nightmare" as wholly appropriate jacket illustration.

Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural is just that, a collection of some of the GREATEST tales of terror and the supernatural ever written. This book contains a breath snatching list of both classic tales (Poe's The Black Cat, Faulkner's A Rose for Emily, Lovecraft's The Rats in the Walls and The Dunwich Horror, as well as James's Casting the Runes) with some lesser known jewels, my favorite being H.G. Wells sea monster yarn The Sea Raiders. This collection is an essential in any well rounded library, even if you are not typically a horror or ghost story fan.

I literally have dozens of horror anthologies, however, this is one, if not the best collection of classic horror/terror stories I have ever read.
It does contain many stories which have been included in other books of its kind, yet there are also quite a few which are rarely to be found in the more typical collection.
This book is a definite MUST for the library of every fan of the classic "scary" short story.

Though I agree with the others who have reviewed this book that it does not feature much of the explicit violence that has come to typify late twentieth century horror, I consider this anthology an invaluable addition to the library of anyone interested in the genre's roots. This anthology spans the time period from roughly 1800 to the 1930s--from Poe to Lovecraft, in other words. The chills in these tales tend more toward the atmospheric than toward the gross-out, but chills they are nonetheless. There is not a bad story in the collection, and it provides a fascinating sample of the breadth and diversity of the horror genre. Also, for readers wondering how these stories have aged, I teach several stories from this anthology in a course on horror literature, and I can tell you that they clearly retain their power and effectiveness with an 18-year-old audience. Even better, these stories force them to reconsider modern horror and evaluate authors such as Stephen King within a much deeper tradition.

I first discovered this thrilling, enthralling, hypnotic collection of gems back in the early 50s, during a wintry night with freezing rain. Needless to say, this was a great combination to burn this collection into my memory and I've already gone through six copies. My favorites are "The Great God Pan" and "The Dunwich Horror", with "Sir Edward Orme" and "Afterward" coming in close. These tales inspired me to write my own collection of weird stories, "The Secret of Jimmy X and Other Stories of the Macabre" that came out in early 2001. "Great Tales" introduced me to Lovecraft, Wharton, Machen and no matter how many times I pick up this thrilling anthology, I'm always instantly hooked. You can have your Stephen King and Anne Rice. Give me a classic tale of horror like "The Rats in the Wall" or "Afterward" any day of the week.

This book was published in 1944. It contained 52 short stories by 42 writers. There were 22 from Great Britain, 15 from the United States, 2 each from Ireland and France, and 1 from Denmark. Three of the authors were women: Sayers, Wharton, Dinesen.

The collection was divided into tales of terror, which took place completely in the material world, and tales of the supernatural. The pieces ranged from the 1840s (Balzac, Hawthorne, Poe) to 1942 (Dinesen), covering virtually each decade. Two-thirds of the stories were from the 20th century.

From the early or mid-19th century, there were Bulwer-Lytton, Wilkie Collins, France's Balzac, Ireland's O'Brien and LeFanu, and Hawthorne and Poe from the U.S. From the late 19th century, Hardy, Kipling, Machen and Wells, France's Maupassant, and from the U.S., Bierce and Henry James.

Those from the 20th century included Hichens, Jacobs, M. R. James, Blackwood, Saki, Onions, Forster, Benson, Coppard, De La Mare, and Collier. And from the U.S., O. Henry, Crawford, Wharton, Lovecraft, Connell, Hemingway, Faulkner, Woollcott and Aiken.

The book collected a number of classic horror stories: "The Black Cat," "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," "The Haunters and the Haunted," "Green Tea," "The Boarded Window," "The Horla," "The Monkey's Paw," "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad," "The Beckoning Fair One," "Sredni Vashtar" and "The Rats in the Walls."

Some of the others were interesting especially for an atmosphere of menace (Blackwood's "Confession"), description of madness (Aiken's "Silent Snow, Secret Snow") or struggles against man and nature (Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game," Carl Stephenson's "Leiningen Versus the Ants"), their irony (Saki's "The Open Window," Collier's "Back for Christmas"), cynicism (Maupassant's "Was It a Dream?") or as a particularly good example of an author's concerns (Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror"). Stories by Wells, Benson and Household included a tribal curse, a modern vampire and what could've been a werewolf.

The tale by Bulwer-Lytton, from the 1850s, has been called the first modern story about a haunted house; it contained a powerful description of a haunting and, as if that weren't enough, threw in mesmerism, a near-immortal, and an astonishing shift in time. One by Blackwood involved the revival of a man's memories of earlier existence. One by Machen dealt with a spirit called from another world by an overconfident surgeon, and contained a seductress who wrecked men's lives. It was interesting for the way conventions of the time forced it to hint at sexual matters, and for calling up a spirt by means of a surgical operation on a patient's nerve, so different from the way an author like Lovecraft would've done it.

The anthology contained great examples of horror focused on the mind ("The Black Cat," "Pollock and the Porrah Man," "The Haunters and the Haunted," "Green Tea," "The Horla," "The Beckoning Fair One," "Silent Snow, Secret Snow"). For this reader, the collection would've been even more enjoyable if more of the pieces hadn't just described a supernatural or other event but also probed more deeply things psychological.

Some of the other tales -- Hawthorne, Charles Collins, Henry James -- were among the more ponderous ones. And stories by Wilkie Collins, Hardy, O. Henry, Sayers, Hemingway, Coppard, Forster, Middleton and Dinesen contained little that seemed frightening; a number of these came from authors who usually wrote outside the categories of terror or the supernatural. Relevant writers who might've added something to the collection: Irving, Twain, R. L. Stevenson, Stoker, Lord Dunsany and Elizabeth Bowen.

Other large anthologies of horror fiction include The Supernatural Omnibus (1931), A Century of Creepy Stories (1934), A Second Century of Creepy Stories (1937), Dark Forces (1980), The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural (1981), The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories (1984), The Penguin Book of Horror Stories (1984), Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural (1985), The Dark Descent (1987), The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories (1989), The Mammoth Book of Terror (1991), The Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories (1991), Final Shadows (1991), Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown (1993), The Oxford Book of 20th Century Ghost Stories (1996), The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (2003), The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (2005), The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories (2007), American Supernatural Tales (2007) and The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories (2008).

Smaller volumes -- below 300 pages or so -- include The Ghost Book (1926), Great Ghost Stories (1930), Great Tales of Horror (1933), Best Ghost Stories (1945), The Second Ghost Book (1952), The Third Ghost Book (1955), The Supernatural in the English Short Story (1959), The Pan Book of Horror Stories, Vols. 1-30 (1959-88), The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, Vols. 1-20 (1964-84), The Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories, Vols. 1-17 (1966-84), The Thrill of Horror: 22 Terrifying Tales (1975), Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories (1984), Weird Tales: Seven Decades of Terror (1997) and Haunted Houses: The Greatest Stories (1997).

I first bought this book when it was sold for $3.95. Yeah, a long time ago. I especially love the fact that it was divided into tales of terror, and then tales of the supernatural. The tales of terror were fun, but the supernatural tales were fantastic. Lovecraft, MR James, Oliver Onions, Algernon Blackwood...so many more. All of the tales were well worth reading, including the Bulwer-Lytton, but some of them were incredible. If you love good horror and terror, minus the supurflous sex and gore of modern horror, buy this book. The only other collection that even comes close to this is the old Ace paperback collection called "Macabre Reader". Both are classic horror.